Brazil: Dilma at the White House, another Latin American head of state slighted

This disconnect was revealed in one account after another in the news media here about the visit, in which commentators lamented the fact that Ms. Rousseff was not received with the pomp of a White House state dinner, recognition granted by the Obama administration to the leaders of South Korea, India and Britain.

“The bilateral reality is far from being a disgrace, despite the points in dispute, but there’s a considerable lack of mutual respect,” Caio Blinder, a columnist for the magazine Veja, said in an essay describing the “downgrade” of Ms. Rousseff’s visit.

This was Dilma’s first presidential visit to the USA and she was not amused, and, at the press conference following the two-hour meeting,

the leaders’ eyes rarely met, and Ms. Rousseff rarely looked at Mr. Obama as he spoke. He looked intently at her during her remarks, nodding in agreement at times. But he seemed to bristle when she expressed concern that America’s “monetary expansion policy” could impair growth in emerging economies like Brazil’s. Monetary policy is the responsibility of the Federal Reserve; the White House and Congress deal with fiscal policy.

No breakthroughs were revealed regarding Brazil’s policies in the Middle East, which seem to have undergone some fine-tuning under Ms. Rousseff from those of her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who in 2010 tried to forge an ambitious uranium exchange deal with Iran.